Alliance

An alliance is made up of one or more players and allows them to pool their resources to gain access to special features. Alliances also come with the general ability to socialize and compete as a group against other alliances. The social aspect is, however, optional and often omitted.

To take part in an alliance, a player first needs to build an alliance tower, which, unlike all other towers, costs gems to build and upgrade.

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Every alliance has a name and an emblem. While the emblem can be redesigned by the leader at any time, the name cannot be changed. All members of an alliance have both alliance name and emblem displayed right next to their names whenever they’re presented to the outside (in Leaderboards, the list of recent attackers, favorites, etc.).

Some information about an alliance can be seen on its info page which is accessible from the alliance leaderboard or from a player’s page. Publicly available information includes:

Besides this public information, an alliance can also have an internal message that only members can see. This message can only be set by generals. When the message changes, all members get a note in their mailbox.

Members can also see some more information in the members list. They see who is online (indicated by a green light next to a name) and how much gold everyone has donated so far. Donations made with real money are additionally announced by a message in every member's mailbox.

The first advantage of being in an alliance is the permanent gold bonus it provides for its members. A minimum of a 5% gold bonus is always provided, which makes any alliance better than no alliance.

The size of the gold bonus depends on the combined number of all member’s trophies. In order to increase this number, growing the alliance by recruiting new members is the most effective way.

The number of players an alliance can have is limited. The limit depends on the alliance’s level and is capped at 60.

In order to increase the alliance’s level, gold is needed. Gold is pooled in the alliance’s treasury. When there’s enough, the leader can spend it on an immediate upgrade.

With higher alliance levels, new elite boosts or additional levels for existing ones are unlocked. When bought, these boosts improve units or defensive structures for a limited time. Just like upgrades, elite boosts can be bought with the money from the alliance’s treasure.

The gold in the alliance’s treasure comes from its members. Every member can make a donation once every 24 hours. The donated amount depends on the level of their alliance tower. Regardless of the tower’s level, more sizable donations can be made by spending real money. Members can also buy elite boosts directly, which often requires a bigger donation that can only be made by spending real money.

Players can apply by tapping the “apply” button. The leader then receives notice of the application in the mailbox and can accept or decline.

Alliance leaders can invite players by tapping the “invite” button on their info pages. Players then receive notice of the invitation in their mailbox, where they can accept or decline. An accepted invitation only goes through if there is still room for another player in the alliance.

In any case, there’s no more communication involved and no option to include any kind of message in invitations or applications. The whole process works with tapping a few buttons and without any personal communication.

Every player who has an alliance tower can start his or her own alliance. After deciding on the alliance’s name (which cannot be changed afterwards) and investing 50K gold, the player automatically becomes the alliance’s leader.

When selecting new members for an alliance, there are two things a leader can look for: trophy count and the size of the player’s donations. The latter is indicated on a player’s page where it says “donates 50k”, for example.

Most players can be invited into an alliance by its leader. As long as they have an alliance tower and don’t have invitations blocked they can be invited, even if they’re already in another alliance.

At lower levels it can be hard to find suitable members for a new alliance since not everyone has an alliance tower. In this case it can be helpful to look at the people competing in the same league. Most active players have built the tower.

Soldiers are regular members of an alliance. They can take part in the alliance’s chat and donate gold to the alliance. They can also buy elite boosts for the alliance, but have to pay for them on their own with no help from the alliance’s treasure.

Otherwise soldiers enjoy the benefits of being in the alliance but have no say in its affairs and can be fired by the leader at any time.

As a game, Royal Revolt 2 is designed for every player to be played by him or herself. Before alliances, there was no way to interact with other players in any way but to attack them. With alliances, the game now tentatively offers some features to socialize. Players within an alliance can now use a chat to communicate directly. They also share the common goal to strengthen the alliance in order to reap its benefits.

However, the social aspect remains very limited, even within an alliance. With the alliance leader being the only one who can really decide anything and everyone else basically just contributing gold, coordination isn’t needed and the chat by itself has little purpose. Communication with new members is also handled impersonally without any real communication between players.

With little need and possibilities to communicate, alliances are often rather impersonal arrangements. This only changes if its members either know each other outside the game as well or make an active effort to socialize.

Alliances offer two basic benefits to their members: gold bonus and elite boosts. The gold bonus depends on the combined number of the members’ trophies. This number depends on the trophies of the individual members, but also on the number of members, which depends on the alliance’s level.

Elite boosts also depend on the alliance’s level. Both levelling and elite boosts depend on the alliance’s ability to raise gold. Members with more trophies are likely to be more active, have better alliance towers, and be more willing to spend real money on donations.

For players this translates into the goal to be in an alliance with as many trophies as possible. Players have the incentive to always join the best possible alliance.

Alliances, represented by their leader, share the same goal. Their incentive is to maximize the alliance’s trophy count by selecting the best players for the alliance.

In theory, players would have to change alliances whenever there is a chance to trade up. However, most of the higher-up alliances cannot be joined without invitation or application. Before a player can apply at a new alliance, it‘s necessary to leave the old one first. Until the application is accepted or rejected, the player is without an alliance. This makes switching alliances risky and outweighs the benefits of a small improvement like 1% higher gold bonus.

In practice, this means that most of the initiative lies with alliance leaders. They can invite new members even if they’ve already joined other alliances, as long as a player hasn’t disabled invitations. They can even invite more players than there is room left, minimizing their own risk. Still, they need to make room as otherwise players can’t join.

In order to make room for new players, leaders can resort to fire weaker players from the alliance. With one or more spots unfilled until new members join, the alliance is a little weaker, but the effect is rather negligible.

A limiting factor for any alliance is its leader. While weaker members can be exchanged for stronger ones, the leader’s spot is taken.

As both players and alliances try to trade up, there is a theoretical point where things are more or less stable. This would be when the top players are all in the first alliance, then the next best players in the second one and so on. However, this stability would only last until an alliance reaches the next level, making room for another player. It would then invite the top player from the next alliance, who would leave a free spot there – and so on.

There are several aspects speaking to the point that this is just theory. Not all alliances operate without any solidarity between members and not every player is invested in seeking the best possible alliance all the time.

Since player’s trophy counts change constantly, a really stable condition cannot be reached. Besides, trophies aren’t everything and a player making big donations is valuable to the alliance as well. Spending real money is also a factor by which an alliance can grow past others.

Most top ten players belong to the same alliance

Still, at the top of the leaderboards, things are rather stable. While little changes in the leaderboards are to be expected, it’s unlikely that big changes in the top 10 alliances happen overnight. As players continue to have the incentive to join the highest alliance possible, the highest alliances are able to attract the best players and therefore keep their position. Even though it’s not as perfect as in theory, some sort of equilibrium has been reached.